Intrusive thoughts are thoughts coming by themselves about bad things when you are somewhat close to a violent or dangerous situation.
For instance, if you give a baby to someone with intrusive thoughts, they could momentarily have the idea of hurting the baby, even if they don't intent to. Or such person standing near a cliff or up a bridge could have the sudden urge to jump (often called "call of the void"). Or, someone with intrusive thoughts seeing a train coming at full speed in front of them could have sudden thoughts about jumping over the rails.
But who knows. Maybe it's just me.

[–] TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. I just didn't make the leap (ha) to suicidal ideation.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

it's not generally suicidal ideation, i'd say that is a malfunction of the intrusive thought mechanism.

far as i can tell it exists as our brain simulating what could happen, we see a cliff and go "i could throw this baby off the cliff", and we're supposed to immediately go "jesus fuck that would be horrible, i should hold onto the baby tighter and keep an eye out for anyone else who looks like they might throw a baby off the cliff, also maybe we should do something to prevent people from being able to throw babies off the cliff".